This August, WeDirectory features four contemporary ceramicists and sculptors working in material-first design. From Athens-based ceramics studios to handcrafted sculptural installations, these makers prioritize material behavior over predetermined form, creating objects that challenge conventional beauty and function.
This month, we're featuring:
Ceramic 47
MANU
Ambra Castagnetti
Miriam Cernuda
Deformed and Studied: Ceramic 47
From Fragility to Stability Series, Ceramic 47. Photo: Apostolis Koukousas
Faye Papargyropoulou spent twenty years as a creative director in advertising. She built brand systems for international clients – work that required precision, strategic thinking, and a clear understanding of how form communicates. When she founded Ceramic 47 in Athens, she didn't abandon that training but she applied it differently.
Her ceramics are characterized by irregular, deformed shapes. Each piece is deliberately pushed into forms that resist conventional ideas of balance and beauty, the imperfection is intentional and studied, not accidental. It’s interesting how her background informs this approach – she understands visual hierarchy and how images register, she knows what happens when you deliberately break expectation. Her work doesn't apologize for its asymmetry – it argues for it.
For viewers accustomed to seeing beauty as refinement and symmetry, her pieces ask a direct question: what if you considered what you normally dismiss?
Material-First Design: MANU
The Meadow Collection, MANU. Photo © MANU
MANU was founded in 2024 by Therese Cappelen, a graphic designer who worked in branding before the studio started. "I mostly wanted to play with materials," she says of her design school years. That interest became the studio's core method.
At MANU, each collection begins with material. The studio works with recycled, overlooked, or unexpected materials – and doesn't impose predetermined forms. Instead, it follows what the material will allow: its behavior, its limitations, what its surface wants to show. This requires proximity – MANU manufactures close to source, working directly with artisans and manufacturers in a hands-on approach that prioritizes skill and care over scale.
The recent "The Meadow" collection exemplifies this. Handmade by Danish glassworkers using traditional flameworking techniques, each piece captures a flower at peak summer in glass.
MANU positions objects as things to adopt, not discard. The language itself signals this: "adopted" instead of "purchased." It's a different relationship to what we make and keep.
Sculptural Practice and Identity: Ambra Castagnetti
Ambra Castagnetti, Furiosa, 2022. 'second best scenario' at Galleria Francesca Minini, 2022
Ambra Castagnetti is a Milan- and Berlin-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, and performance. Her work explores bodies and identity as contested, fluid territories – creating forms that question what a body can be and how it can exist.
Her exhibition record is substantial: the 2022 Venice Biennale (with the installation Dependency), solo shows at galleries including Francesca Minini and New Galerie, a performance at the Triennale Milano, and presentations at institutions from Rome's Quadriennale to MAMBO in Bogotá.
Her sculptures examine bodies as political and philosophical problems. They are hybrid forms (neither quite figurative nor abstract) that ask what a body can be and where its boundaries are. Working in clay, resin and other materials, she creates forms that are simultaneously vulnerable and resistant. The work raises direct questions: who decides what a body looks like? Who determines its shape?
Handmade Ceramics and Silk Road Studies: Miriam Cernuda
Miriam Cernuda (Working in the Redwoods). Photo: Holly Fielder
Miriam Cernuda is the creative mind behind Working in the Redwoods. Since 2013, she's developed a practice that sits between craft and sculpture, between utility and objects made for contemplation.
Her background is industrial design and jewelry but her work has moved consistently toward objects designed to be lived with and felt – what she describes as "that subtle balance between feeling through a material and the beauty of its contemplation."
Her current work draws from historical research along the ancient Silk Road. She studies the stripped-down forms, earth tones, and civilizations of that route, then translates them into contemporary objects: ceramics, decorative pieces, interior installations. Everything is made from natural materials in their original state and color – simple forms, ochres, terracottas, earth browns, surfaces that are clearly handmade. Each piece carries history and craftsmanship but feels present rather than nostalgic.
Projects of The Month
Throughout August, Ceramic 47, MANU, Ambra Castagnetti, and Miriam Cernuda joined our Project of The Week section – where we curate standout projects, practices, and brands across design, art, and craft. Last month's jewelry focus continues this conversation across different disciplines.
